Earth & Water

Earth Facts –The Blue Planet

• Earth is referred to as the BLUE PLANET. WHY? Because from space, the oceans combined with our atmosphere make our planet look blue. .

• It is the only planet whose name has not been derived from the Roman or Greek mythology? The name has originated from the 8th century Anglo Saxon word- Erda. This means ground or soil .

• More than 80% of the earth's surface is volcanic.

• The we shrank Earth's history in 24 hours, we human beings would appear only in lasr two minutes. It tells that the Earth was present in this universe much before the human beings .

• The Sun is 333,000 times as large as our earth.

• The temperature of earth's inner core is as high as 7000 degrees ,which is even more than the temperature on the surface of the Sun .

• Only 11 percent of the earth's surface is used to grow food. .

• 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water. .

• Planet Earth rotates around the Sun at approximately 1000 miles per hour. .

• The Earth is like a great big magnet,so it pulls everything towards it. This pulling force of earth is called gravity. .

• Earth doesn’t take 24 hours to rotate on its axis.It’s actually 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. .

• A year on Earth isn’t 365 days .It’s actually 365.2564 days. It’s this extra .2564 days that creates the need for leap years. .

• Earth has 1 moon and 2 co-orbital satellites .

• Oceans occupy nearly 71 percent of the surface of earth .

• Ten percent of the earth's surface is covered by ice .

• The deepest part of the Earth is Pacific Ocean , it is called the Mariana Trench. It is deeper than Mount Everest is high! .

• Earth is the third planet from the Sun. This is also the fifth largest planet in the entire solar system.Earth is the only planet known to have life. .

• The air on earth consists of around 78 percent nitrogen with 21 percent oxygen. This air also contains 1 percent of other ingredients.

• The temperature of the earth's interior increases by 1 degree every 60 feet down.

• It takes eight and a half minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.

• Geology is the study of the rocks that form the planet’s surface. Geologists examine rocks to find out about the history of the Earth and how Earth was formed.

• Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth and its peak is 8848 meters above sea level. And amazingly it is gaining height

• April 22 ,every year is celebrated as Earth Day.April 22 is the first official day of Spring in the Northern hemisphere and of Fall in the Southern hemisphere and was chosen to be Earth Day for this reason

• The Earth’s atmosphere is composed mainly of nitrogen (77%), oxygen (21%), argon (.93%), and carbon dioxide (0.03%).

• Earth has 3 layers,Crust (upper part),Mantle(middle part) & Core (inner-most part),out of these Crust is the lightest.

• Seismometer is the device with which earth-quackes is measured.Richter scale shows intensity of earth-quake -that is how strong the waves are on seismometer.

• Antarctica is world's longest glacier.

• The Earth's equatorial circumference (40,075 km) is greater than its polar circumference (40,008 km..

• The highest recorded temperature on Earth is 136°F (58°C) in Libya in 1922..

• The lowest recorded temperature on Earth is -128.6°F (-89.6°C) in Antarctica in 1983.

• One fifth of land surface is covered by deserts

• Astronomy is study of outer space , aperson who works in this field is known as astronomer.

• Nicolaus Coppenicus was ,the astronomer, who first realized that earth moves round the sun.

Water Facts –The Blue Life

• Have you ever thought about floating ice in a glass of water, glaciers floating in oceans? And ice is solid! From what we know about matter, a solid should sink in liquid as solid molecules are denser than liquids, so why does not the ice, which is solid form of water does not sink in its liquid form. This is a unique quality of water. Its solid form is 9% less dense than its liquid form.

• Although 70% of earth’s surface is covered by water ,but total water on the surface of earth makes up just 0.025 % of earth’s total mass i.e. 25/100,000ths of the stuff of the earth.

• Pure water is so pure that one can’t even drink it. It tastes very bland & due to its solvent properties, it would absorb all the minerals from your tongue & your mouth would feel dry So few minerals are added back to water by water-producing companies so as to make it tastier & safe for your dinking.

• The two-litre bottle of a cola requires five litres water to produce.

• Water exists in almost every substance ,you eat or drink. Percentage of water in few items Milk-90%,Bread-30%, Meat-75%,Egg-73%,Cucumber-95%,Lettuce -95%,Tomato-95%,Potato-75%.

• Water exists in a fourth form too, despite it being so vast & important, it is never mentioned outside scientific circles .The vast quantity of water is locked in the rock deep in the Earth’s mantle ,in a layer about 410 kilometres below your feet.

• All the water on Earth came from space in exactly the form is in now i.e. H2O.

• Every hour, the Earth’s oceans are evaporating 50 cubic kilometres of water into the air (13 trillion gallons).

• Just the leaves from a single acre of trees might send eight thousand gallons of water up into the air in a day, which is enough to fill a normal swimming pool.

• A normal toilet uses 6-8 litres of water for one time use, so if you flush five times a day ,that means 30-40 litres of water being used by one person just for flushing toilets in a day.

• According to WHO, 1.8 million children die every year, either from lack of water or from diseases they get from not-so-pure drinking water. That no. is too high, in other words, it is 5000 children a day.

• 97% of earth's surface H20 (water) is in saltwater oceans!

• Agriculture, producing food for us, uses two thirds of all the water people use.

• Do you know microwave cook/heat your food due to water only? Yes, water molecules inside a cup of coffee or a potato, can spin 1 billion times a second, in response to the microwaves. This spinning motion causes heat, which cooks the surrounding food.

• Popcorn in a microwave pops when the 14 % of each kernel that is water, inside a corn grain, vaporizes into steam and expands the grain.

• You can use internet, your computer, your iPhone because of water only. These all are made by micro-chips, they are so tiny & pathways on them are of nano-size, even a slight impurity won’t let these microchips to function properly, so these microchips are cleaned by using pure water as water takes away all the impurities from path-ways due to its solvent properties.